Film your Marxist Professors

[yyy]

You make the UK sound like the most wretched place on the planet. It’s definitely wretched, but 50% of that is the weather.

@finley

@yyy

but where’s the real world evidence that less educated societies are more prosperous?

Why do you think I’m proposing a less-educated society? Or conversely, why do you believe that the State-funded UK education system produces educated people?

Did I sound like I was praising the UK system? I consider it an improvement over not having a system at all, but it’s no poster child.

@finley

Just because something looks like a school doesn’t necessarily mean that it delivers education. Go to anywhere in Africa to find laughable demonstrations of that.

I know how wretched a just-go-through-the-motions-so-we-can-keep-embezzling-foreign-aid-money type school is. But do you really think it’s just a coincidence that less economically developed countries have higher populations with zero formal education? Or that there’s no causative relationship?

History of education | Recent world-wide trends

@Wikiland

Percentages of the population with no schooling varied greatly among LEDCs in 2000, from less than 10% to over 65%. MEDCs had much less variation, ranging from less than 2% to 17%.

@finley

@yyy

The less the state controls the child, the more the parents control the child. In cases where the parents are the problem, how does giving those same parents more control help?

You’re assuming the State actually has the power to do anything about bad parents. Bad parents will, sadly, fuck their kids up, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

@finley

The parents can do precisely what they want right now because the State enables them to do so. It pays their rent, gives them money for drugs and beer, and pays for their legal costs when they’re caught burgling or committing ABH. If all of that were removed, they’d have a much stronger incentive to not sit around drinking or battering their kids.

Sorry, “ABH” isn’t ringing any bells for me.

If you spend 100% of the time underwater, you simply die. If you manage to reach the surface every now and then, you’re still in danger, but you have a chance of surviving. You’re saying, in effect, if you see someone’s head underwater, don’t interfere.

You’re also taking an all-or-nothing approach to the concept of the welfare state (despite purporting not to) by conflating compulsory education (for children) with what you characterize as drug money for adults.

For an appropriate fee, of course.

I’m not going over that one again, not today anyway.

The Venezuela socialism death spiral thread

I can’t find the article now, but a few years ago when Thailand was in will-they-or-won’t-they-have-a-civil-war mode, iirc it was The Economist that explained the country’s relative stagnation since the AFC as being due to not taking education seriously, compared to neighbors like Malaysia and Vietnam. The gist was, while other developing countries loaded up on skills & knowledge to build their economies, Thailand encouraged its people to stay the same. It was more an ideological problem than a…

Political Implications of IQ Tests [Split from Topic "First time to the U.K. Strange...']

Correct. That is precisely what happens. My experience is this: 80% of kids, regardless of their genetics or the parenting skills of their parents, start out in life pretty normal and with at least a modicum of intelligence. They then get royally fucked-up by going to school with a vocal minority of little bastards, who are allowed to do whatever they like lest their fragile egos should be bruised. Simply allowing those 20% to fail in isolation - which they would do regardless - allows the rema…